Targeted (Hostage Rescue Team Series Book 2) (9 page)

Zoe’s grin widened. “Sign me up, baby. Whatever you’ve got in mind, I’m totally on board.”

That now familiar ball of dread settled hard in his stomach like a chunk of concrete as Tuck walked up to the care home’s main entrance. The smell of the place hit him, a combination of old people and the remnants from whatever breakfast they’d served to the residents lingering in the stale air.

He nodded to the woman at the reception desk and continued down the hall to the elevator, trying to ignore the way his gut contracted at the sight of the residents positioned against the walls in the hallway.

One man sat slumped in his wheelchair, his frame withered and frail, eyes staring blindly down the hallway as he drooled onto the washcloth a care aid had placed between his chin and shoulder. A succession of strokes had rendered him little more than a vegetable. Barely anyone came to see him, Tuck knew, because he’d asked.

The cruellest and most horrifying part was, the man had once been a renowned neurologist. He’d spent most of his adult life treating stroke victims and now he’d wound up like this.

The way his father would likely wind up over the next few weeks.

Feeling ill at the thought, Tuck tore his gaze away and strode for the elevator, was just steps away when it opened and his cousin walked out of it. “Zoe.”

Her head snapped upward, red and black-dyed pigtails swinging slightly, and her face lit up. “Hey, handsome.” She reached for him, wound her arms around him and squeezed hard. “Good to see you.”

“You too.” He eased back to look down at her face. She’d gone a little lighter with the eye makeup today, maybe because she knew his dad preferred her without it. “What are you doing here?”

“Celida wanted to come, so I called and they told me Uncle Al was having a good day. We caught a cab and here we are.” Her smile slipped a bit. “You look tired.”

“Yeah.” He was wiped. Had only gotten home at around four that morning and crashed for three hours before getting a text from the nurse saying what they’d told Zoe. Not wanting to miss out on visiting with his dad, he’d dragged his ass out of bed and driven over right away. “Celida wanted to come here?”

Zoe nodded. “She told me last night. Said she wanted to go see your dad and find out if he remembered her, so she could start coming by from time to time to give him more company. Thought it would be better if I was here with her, just in case.”

A strange tightening sensation squeezed his throat. He swallowed. “She said that?”

Zoe gave him a soft smile. “Yeah. Now I love her even more.”

He could relate. “She wasn’t going to tell me, was she?”

“No,” Zoe admitted. “She wanted to do this without you knowing because she didn’t want you to feel like you owed her or anything.”

Hell.
Tuck looked away, struggling with the knot of emotion lodged in his chest. He’d been handling all this alone up ‘til now and having her volunteer to do this was way more than he’d ever expected.

He knew she cared, knew she wanted him but she was so closed off sometimes. Her self-protective instincts were strong, he knew some of it at least was because of her childhood, and it was rare for her to let him see behind the wall she held between herself and the rest of the world. Maybe she hadn’t intended for him to know about her coming here, but it was definitely a glimpse behind that wall.

“Well, go on up and see them. I left them reading the paper together. I’m just gonna grab us some coffee and a few snacks then I’ll be right up. Want anything?”

“Sure, whatever you guys are having.” All the way up to the top floor he couldn’t stop thinking about Celida. He rounded the corner and got his first look through the window of the activity room and what he saw made his heart twist.

Celida sat curled up next to his dad on the sofa beneath the window, her head bent close to his as she read something in the newspaper he held. Warm, yellow sunlight bathed them both, making golden highlights gleam in her dark hair. Her voice was muted through the glass but he could see the little smile on his father’s face as she read to him.

Tuck paused with his hand on the doorknob, pulling in deep breaths to ease the sharp ache in his chest. When he stepped into the room Celida stopped talking, and she and his father both looked up at him. He caught the flash of surprise on her face before looking at his dad and braced himself.

The bright blue eyes staring back at him were lively, filled with awareness, and when that familiar smile of welcome spread across his face, Tuck knew his dad recognized him. And Christ, it made him want to wrap his arms around those frail shoulders and cry like a baby out of sheer relief and gratitude.

He blinked away the sudden sting of tears and smiled back. “Hey, Dad.”

“Morning, son. This pretty young thing tells me she’s a friend of yours.”

His father didn’t remember her then. Tuck nodded, his gaze shifting to Celida. “Yeah, she is. A good friend.”

Celida gave him a small smile, a bit hesitant as if she didn’t know what his reaction would be to finding her here, and her lightly bronzed cheeks turned a pretty pink. God, he wanted to kiss her. “We were just catching up on the details of last night’s Orioles win,” she told him.

“Ah.” She was so fucking pretty, and her being here like this out of the goodness of her heart just blew him away. She had so many layers to her. Tuck wanted to uncover the ones he hadn’t seen yet.

“Not the same as when they had Cal Ripken,” his father said to him with a sigh. “Remember how I took you to the game when he broke the record for most consecutive games played by any player?”

The lump in his throat was so huge he could barely speak. “I remember.” Fuck, he was gonna lose it. He stared at his father, wanting to memorize every single second of this, every tiny nuance of his expression and the sound of his voice before it was all taken from him.

His father had been everything to him growing up, parent, mentor, asskicker. Since becoming an adult his father had backed off on the parental role and they’d become best friends. It was natural for a parent to go first, but dammit, not like this, with his mind and spirit and dignity stripped away first.

Tuck crossed to a chair beside his father and lowered his weight into it as Celida picked up reading from where she’d left off. They talked a bit more and a few minutes later Zoe came in with the coffee and pastries. His dad started talking about things Zoe had done as a kid, her pet tarantula Hairy, and made them all laugh. His long-term memory was still mostly intact, when he was able to access it. This was all so surreal, like a happy family gathering.

It was a miracle.

Tuck brought up things about his parents, things about his mom, and though his father’s smile grew wistful as he thought about his dearly departed wife, he was a hundred percent present, both in the moment and in the memories. Celida asked him more about his service in the Army and his father’s sunken chest seemed to puff out, pride radiating from every pore as he told her about his favorite memories.

Then his gaze shifted to Tuck, and the pride he saw in those eyes, the pride of a father for his son, just about did Tuck in. “Brad’s the best son a man could ask for, and a helluva soldier. I couldn’t be prouder. He’s the best thing that ever happened to me, aside from his mother.”

Fuck.
A steel band constricted around his chest.

Celida looked over and met Tuck’s gaze. Her understanding smile and the sheen of moisture in her eyes was the last straw. He stood, spoke to Zoe. “Will you excuse me for a minute? I need to talk to Celida.”

Startled, Celida got up and followed him out of the room. He didn’t look at her, didn’t dare speak as he headed to the elevator for fear he’d break down. By the time they reached the lobby he was back in control and the cool, fresh air when they stepped outside loosened the bands locked around his chest.

Pulling in a deep breath, he walked to a private little courtyard around the side of the building. There was no one else out here, just the bubble of the fountain in the center and the chirping of birds.

Celida faced him with an almost wary expression on her face, watching him. “Are you mad? I didn’t mean to intrude on you or your dad’s privacy or anything, I just wanted to—”

“Quiet.”

Her mouth snapped shut, eyes widening a fraction at the low command.

Tuck shook his head, at a loss for what to say. The woman had no freaking idea what her gesture meant to him, especially since she’d done it without the expectation of him ever knowing.

Unable to speak, he simply reached for her. He wrapped his arms around her back and pulled her to his chest, buried his face in the warm silk of her hair. “Thank you,” he rasped out.

She relaxed at his words and nestled in close, her hands gliding gently up and down his back, over muscles strung so taut he knew they were quivering. “Don’t thank me for it. I wanted to come.”

Tuck squeezed his eyes shut and held on harder. Thankfully she seemed to guess how close he was to coming unglued and didn’t say anything, didn’t try to get him to talk. She just stood there pressed tight to him and rested her head on his shoulder, giving him the comfort of her embrace, the healing balm of her understanding and acceptance.

The emotions swirling inside him made it hard to breathe. He’d already been in deep with her but now his heart went into freefall. It should have scared the shit out of him but suddenly he didn’t care about any of that. He only cared that this felt right.
They
felt right. And that was all that mattered.

He didn’t know how much time passed while they stood holding each other, but it had to have been at least a few minutes before he lifted his head and put a hand on the side of her face to coax her eyes up to his. Her dark gray eyes were so clear and in them he could see a hint of vulnerability.

Cradling her face in his palm he lowered his lips to hers and kissed her tenderly, putting everything he felt into the caress of his lips and tongue. His reward was the little gasp she gave and the way her fingers curled into his shoulders as she pressed closer.

The sound of approaching voices reached him and he drew back, his thumb sweeping back and forth over the rise of her cheekbone. “Thank you,” he said again.

Giving him a little smile, she nodded, still holding onto his shoulders. As she searched his face, her smile faded. “You look beat.”

So did she, but he knew better than to ask her why she wasn’t sleeping. “I am. Long night last night, but he hardly ever has days like this anymore,” he said, nodding his chin toward the building. “When they call me to tell me he’s having a good day, I show up.”

“God I wish I could make this all go away for you,” she murmured.

Ah, hell, sunshine, you’re killing me
. “You did more today than you realize.”

She lowered her gaze as though uncomfortable and stepped back. “Will you stay here for a while then?”

“Another hour or so at least. He’ll usually get tired pretty fast so when I see that I take him back to his room and sit with him until he falls asleep.”

Her eyes met his once more and he caught the flash of pain there. “You don’t know how lucky he is to have you.”

“Well, I was pretty lucky to have him for a dad, so it’s the least I can do.” He knew she’d had it rough as a kid, with a mother who wasn’t exactly emotionally available a lot of the time. But it had forged her into the strong, determined woman she was today, and that strength was one of the things he loved most about her. “What about you?”

She sighed. “Travers told me I had to take the day off,” she said with an annoyed expression that made him grin. “I talked to him this morning about the bombing. He told me there’s still no one claiming responsibility and no known motive, let alone what or who the actual target was.”

“We saw the security camera footage of the guy last night,” he told her and her gaze sharpened with interest. “The car he drove onto base was stolen but he had a military sticker on the windshield and must’ve produced credible ID. Cops found the car right back where he’d taken it from, a housing project in Baltimore. No prints or anything left behind. Footage shows a guy in a ball cap and hoodie getting out of the car in the parking lot with a backpack in his hand. No clear shots of his face. It doesn’t capture him planting the bomb but the EOD and forensics crews said the guy’s an expert with explosives. He attached it to the engine block of DeLuca’s truck, set the timer and left.”

Celida frowned. “Well it wasn’t a suicide bombing so we know he either doesn’t want to die or he has more attacks planned. But was DeLuca’s truck chosen at random?”

“They don’t know. They don’t know much of anything yet besides this guy being a serious ongoing threat until he’s caught.”

She exhaled. “Lovely.”

He caught one of her hands, wrapped his fingers around it. “What about you?”

She blinked. “What about me?”

He gave her a bland look. “You were hit by a blast wave yesterday,” he reminded her. “How are you?”

“Fine,” she answered with a stiff shrug. “Little sore, ears ringing a bit, but no big deal. And I had Zoe there last night.”

Tuck immediately filled in what she hadn’t said out loud. That Zoe’s presence had made her feel better. He planned on being the one giving that comfort from now on, whenever he could. “I’m coming over later.”

She ducked her head but he could tell from the little smile around the edges of her lips that she liked the idea. “Okay. We can eat dinner together.”

“Sure. I’ll call you then pick something up on my way over.”

She looked up at him. “I told Zoe about us.”

He grinned. “That didn’t take long.”

“No,” she agreed with a smile. “She didn’t seem that surprised. Actually, she threatened to kill me and feed me to the gators back home if I ever hurt you.”

“She’s pretty protective of me,” he admitted, amused by the threat. Except yeah, Celida definitely had the power to hurt him.

“Sure, because you so obviously need it. I mean, just look at you. Only five-eleven and full of muscle.” She punched him lightly in the shoulder, her fist hitting solid muscle, but a thrill shot through him at the way her gaze swept over the length of his body. He liked that interested, almost possessive light in her eyes. As if she loved knowing that he was hers. Although he doubted she realized just how far that went for him.